One of my friend just spent $200+ to get his repaired, as manufacture waranty only covers 90 days.

-dan

-- dan wood (dwu@netspect.com), May 24, 2000

Answers

my nikon has a year warranty... 90 days is slightly too short... i would assume that most do... but i never would buy a warranty because the value of the camera depreciates so much that it would worth half it's value by the years end... and most defects would show itself in the first few months... and i assume that the extended warranty is a third party warranty (which i just recalled a recent event where my coworker bought a 36inch sony tv with a extended warranty from tops appliance store... and the store just went out of business.. the warranty went with it) ... and the last part... most warranty do not cover impact damage *grin* which is what happened to my last digicam =) damn butterfingers! but of course some people will just have the peace of mind by having it and it's not a bad choice. i just for one do not think it's worth it...

-- keat lim (keatlim@my-deja.com), May 24, 2000.

An extended warranty is just another name for an insurance policy which is another name for a bet. You are betting the camera will break and they betting it won't. The next time a sales person trys to sell you an extended warranty ask them, in all seriousness, "You really think it's going to break?", and press them for an answer.

And don't forget that the premium not only has to cover the cost of the repair but it has to allow for a profit. I've never bought one and never regretted it.

-- bill (this_old_house@pobox.com), May 24, 2000.

Save your dough Dan:
Here's my suggestion. If you are nervous about affording a repair then put aside the money you would spend on the extended warranty. Make monthly installments - front load the payments to your Dan Wood Warranty Service so when the actual warranty expires you have an account for repair. It's a good bet it's not going to break right after the warranty so in a relativey short period of time you'll have enough to cover any warranty. Most cameras are repaired for a flat fee anyway. Well - keep that around for a couple years. When you replace the camera the money can be redeemed in full - with interest. See if the store offering the extended warranty will let you redeem the money if you don't need a repair....
HA!

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), May 24, 2000.

An extended warranty is never worthwhile as a bet - the house always wins. There are a few special circumstances where it may be a good idea, however.

One case is where you intend to make heavy use of the camera, and the terms of the extended warranty make it a "service contract", rather than a literal guarantee of workmanship and materials. For example, I own a bunch of cameras which my employees use pretty intensively, and we find various plastic parts failing. It would have been worthwhile to line up somebody (even at say $100 per camera) just to make sure our repair was done promptly and that we didn't get dragged into disputes about whether we had "abused" the camera.

As it is, I have lost one camera for two and a half months (they claim it's repaired and will be shipped back in a week) because the damn plastic tripod thread wore out from having the camera mounted and removed once a day for four months. ("Abuse"! said Toshiba.)

A second camera has been gone for almost two months, but was beyond the repair service's ability, so they sent it back to Toshiba. No hint when or if I'll ever see it again. (The shutter button assembly failed, after being pressed roughly 40,000 times.)

So, at least for me, getting somebody to just plain repair my camera and give it back to me would be worthwhile. For everybody else, I agree that extended warranties are not generally worth the money.

-- Mark Grebner (Mark@Grebner.com), May 25, 2000.

They're like the lottery -- a tax on the mathmatically challenged. *smile*

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), May 25, 2000.

Well my biased opinion is that I would always buy a warranty at a reasonable price on something as high tech as a digicam. I work for CompUSA part time and see many people who need camera repairs that simply throw out the camera since it often costs hundreds of dollars to fix a camera if its broken. Manufacturers warranties are VERY lame when it comes to dealing with cameras. I bought a warranty on almost everything I own including my Coolpix 950, the 5 year warranty from Mack camera ( I had to order the camera since we don't sell Nikon) was only $89. Your a fool not to buy a warranty since it it covered if the unit is dropped or somehow non-functional. I also bought a 3 year warranty on my Sprintscan 4000, how could I pass up a $59 3year warranty on a $1500 scanner? Your crazy if you don't get one for that price. If the Sprint scan breaks in 13 month you might as well chuck it in the trash, now I get it fixed for free and thats the reality with todays electronics. I see it work for customers all the time where I work, and everyone who works for an electronics company buys them since fixing modern electronics is so expensive, more often than not units are completely replaced under warranty. I see plenty of people who bought extented warranties on a Pentium 100 laptops getting 475Mhz laptops after their machine wasn't worth fixing and the warranty companies said to replace the machine. I work in the industry and disagree that people are "getting over" on you. Don't buy a warranty if you so choose, but accept the fact that your on you own if you break the camera and live with it. Me, if my Nikon 950 dies in 3 years, sure it will only be worth $150, but if it can't be fixed it gets replaced. How does $89 seem like a rip off being that my options are to throw it out, or get it fixed for nothing? Do the math... it's not even costing me 20 bucks a year. Even if they replaced it with a lower end camera, in 3 years every low end camera will be 3-4 megapixel units that are better than TODAYS high end cameras, now do you understand ?

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), May 25, 2000.